As I sit here at lunchtime having just eaten and knowing that my Daughter is eating her school dinner an EMAIL from Netmums landed in my inbox about their campaign to help feed hungry children. What country could this be that needed our help? The answer might shock you as much as it did me – our Country, right here in Britain in 2012 there are children who don’t know when they will get their next meal.

Here’s an extract from Netmums site:

Research from The Kids Company and Netmums found out the truth about Britain’s hungry children. The results are scandalous as well as heartbreaking.

One million UK children living with ‘food insecurity’ – not knowing where their next meal is coming from

Half of UK teachers report having to feed hungry children themselves

233 per cent increase in children turning to charity to be fed in the last 12 months

You can question how can this happen and why aren’t the agencies taking care of these kids and yes these questions and more should be asked but whilst this is investigated and solutions identified kids will still be hungry.

Netmums and The Kids Company have a campaign to raise money to take positive action to help with that immediate need of providing food to hungry children through recycling of old mobile phones.

Old Mobiles, that once ‘essential’ gadget no longer in use, can be recycled to raise money to give the kids the food they need, the real essential of a meal.

Probably most of us either have or know someone who probably has an old mobile lurking in the house gathering dust – take a look at the campaign site, hopefully you will be able to help in some small way.

Recycling a single mobile phone can provide a child with nutritious meals for a month

We’ve been feeling very patriotic in our home following the ‘Jubilee’ especially on 6th June 2012 when we took some time to reflect that it was 68th anniversary of D Day. I was explaining the significance of this to my young daughter as the date that a massive military force set out from England towards France. It’s intention was to overthrow Nazi Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler.

In simple words British & Allied soldiers took the fight direct to the enemy.

I explained that this is important history – it’s very pertinent to us as our home town was where many preparations for D Day were made and literally just around the corner from our home is a slipway. From D Day onwards this slipway was used night and day by troops and vehicles departing to join the invasion force, this hectic activity continued from June through to September 1944.

I explained that the freedom that we experience today in Britain is very much due to the ordinary people who stood up and fought for what they believed in. She asked me what I meant by this and I gave her a simple recent example of when her Dad and I had joined the Police Protest March in London in May because we were free to show our unhappiness with the government’s planned cuts and changes to policing. She smiled and said oh I see because you’ve marched everything is going to be OK now.

Sadly I had to tell her No, that this particular ‘fight’ was continuing.

And it is, despite their being more than 30,000 officers marching and a growing body of support against planned changes to policing, the coalition government are continuing on their chosen road.

So Where is the Public Mandate for Change?

The coalition government was formed in 2010 and is the first time the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have had a power-sharing deal at Westminster and is also the first coalition in the UK since the Second World War.

The coalition apparently have a five-year fixed-term parliament , a short time you might think, but the decisions they are making with regard to public services will have long-term consequences to us, the ordinary people of Great Britain. Unfortunately many people haven’t woken up to this fact yet and I admit if my husband was not a serving Police Officer I’m not sure I would have recognised the significance of the changes proposed. I probably would have been more focused on the changes to the NHS which is also a focus of reform and cuts. Certainly I have been unable to find much prior to the election giving us the ‘voting’ public any insight into what was planned.

Winsor Latest

I heard today that Winsor (see my previous blogs) has been identified as the Home Secretary’s preferred candidate for Her Majesties Chief Inspector of Constabulary. If like me your not sure what a HMCIC is then have a look at this link

When rumours of this were leaked the #AntiWinsorNetwork on Twitter went crazy. A general feeling of despair was the general response.

Inspecting Policing in the Public Interest

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) independently assesses police forces and policing across activity from neighbourhood teams to serious crime and the fight against terrorism – in the public interest.

According to its website ‘HMIC is independent of Government and the police‘.

Judging by the Twitter frenzy this evening, I don’t think I’m alone in wondering how the same person appointed by the Government to lead the review of policing can then be responsible for leading HMIC and assessing police forces as an ‘independent’?

Policing by Consent

And so I urge you to find out more about what is proposed for the future of policing as this is something that us the ordinary folk of Great Britain rely on. In the UK policing is by consent, what does this mean? Peel’s most often quoted principle: The police are the public and the public are the police.

This is wonderfully summed up for me in this picture from the jubilee (sorry don’t know who took this)

Policing By Public Consent explained in a picture

So members of the public, get informed find out what’s planned for Policing, after all this is OUR service and ask yourself why are the government so keen on pushing through the reform of the police service, privatisation of elements of the service and putting in place someone with a vested interest to oversee the performance of police forces?

As yourself, what might the police force in Great Britain look like in 10 years time if these changes are implemented unopposed and if this is what you want the future of policing to be?

To my mind, like D-Day the battle to save Our Police will not be won overnight, it will rely on individuals coming together, standing up for what they believe in and ensuring that the future of policing in Great Britain is protected for future generations.

Could you/Would you?
– I am thankful to those that do.
I’m also not ashamed to say that I cried when reading this blog.
Perhaps when you read the ‘longest walk’ it will touch your heart and give you an understanding that behind the uniform are real people who care.

Sadly, as I write this comment I am sure somewhere in the UK another Officer is at this very moment walking up to a families door with news that will change their life forever.

Yet this in the early hours of this morning, the Chaos shift had to turn out to yet another scene of mangled debris and destruction. This time we were met by the sight that we see far too often, and is so easily avoided.

The driver of the only vehicle involved in this collision was out of his car by the time we arrived. By out, I mean ejected ….. through the windscreen and onto the not so soft, fluffy and forgiving tarmacadam surface of the carriageway.

Sadly, there was nothing that could be done for this guy – he was dead by the time we arrived; probably (and hopefully) he’d died instantly…

E-petitions are an easy, personal way for you to influence government and Parliament in the UK. If an E-petition gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in the House of Commons.

There are 3 E-Petitions on HM Government E Petition site broadly related to the Police protest. The number of signatures at the time of writing this blog are shown below:-

It’s the eve of the Police March in London, I’ve had a sleepless night so here I am writing another blog early in the morning so I can explain to my daughter why tomorrow I will be joining her dad, other Police Officers and supporters in a dignified march through London and attending my first ever protest.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what this March is all about. There are lots of blogs on the internet about the ‘police protest’ and if she was older we’d look at some of these, but she’s only 10 so I’m going to explain it in language that my daughter will hopefully understand from the perspective of our little family.

What it’s NOT

It’s not a strike – whilst most employees in the UK have the right to strike, the Police are in a small minority of special cases who are forbidden to strike –it’s illegal for them to strike. Her Dad and other Officers are marching in their holiday or day off. I’m taking a day off work to join them.

It’s not about the history – whilst British Policing has grown out of years of tradition and experience it clearly has changed with the times. She won’t remember it, but if I think back to the late 70’s when I was 10, Policing was very different than it is today. For a start the internet hadn’t been invented and no-one had heard of Twitter or Facebook! I’ll show her this clip so she gets the picture. Whilst she likes history, particularly the Victorians, really she is interested in what’s going to happen, rather than what’s happened in the past.

It’s not about the Politics. In 2008, when she was too young to understand what was happening and more interested in Charlie & Lola cartoons, the Police last marched in protest about changes – these were changes proposed by the Labour government, this time it’s in protest about changes recommended by Tom Winsor on behalf of the Conservative/LibDem coalition Government.

It’s not about the money, money, money – she loves Jessie J and so apparently does Constable Chaos who has explained the money issue really well in his Blog.

She won’t understand the detail of this but she’s been brought up to know you can’t spend more money than you have in your moneybox. Sometimes this means difficult choices, but if something is important enough she or we will want to spend our money on it. She also knows ‘cheaper isn’t always better’.

It’s not going to be like the news film of strikes and marches that she might have seen on the TV or internet. It will be a silent, dignified march– As I tell her, sometimes you don’t have to say anything to make your point – she calls this the ‘mummy stare’.

At this point she’s likely to say ‘Come on Mum get on with it, what is it about then?’

What it is….

It’s a protest march across London undertaken in Police Officer’s and supporters own time, because they care.

It’s about making the public aware of what is intended and encouraging them to ASK why is this happening and if they feel they’ve been consulted on changes to this critical public service.

It’s about supporting the Police Officers who do such an essential job in society.

So Keeping It Simple I will explain it to my daughter as:-

A March for the future

A March to show the public that Police Officers care

A March to keep her, her friends and all the people she knows SAFE

I hope she’ll understand and I hope when she grows into a teenager she’ll benefit from living in a society that cared enough to ask :-